The present invention relates to a printer controlling device which displays a load state of at least one printer connected through a network, a printer controlling method, and a computer program for allowing a computer to execute the method is stored.
Conventionally there exists a service called xe2x80x9ccopy servicexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cprinting servicexe2x80x9d and the like in which a designated document requested by a customer (mainly, company) is printed by a designated number of sheets, and the printed sheets are bound in a designated method and supplied.
A printing request is carried out in such a manner that a draft recorded in a paper medium or electronic medium (FD, MO, CD-ROM or the like) and a printing instruction in which the number of copies of the draft, a binding method, a delivery date and the like are written are mailed to a dealer who provides the above-described service (this is called xe2x80x9cnew orderxe2x80x9d). When a draft which was also previously requested to be printed is re-requested to be printed, the draft which is in storage on the side of the dealer may be designated and the number of copies and the like may informed on telephone (this is called xe2x80x9crepeated orderxe2x80x9d).
On the side of the dealer, processing procedure or processing time periods are determined by instinct or experience of a person in charge of this job (or task) while taking into account the number of prints, delivery date, limit of personal or physical resource and the like for each of requests received from an indefinite number of customers. According to this schedule, the designated draft is copied by a copier, or the draft is printed by a printer connected to a personal computer, and finally the copied or printed sheets are confirmed and collated and delivered to the customer.
Whereas, there is realized a system in which the printing request from a customer is received online through Internet, and scheduling or print out are automatically carried out using a print server and a plurality of printers connected to the print server.
For example, a customer accesses a Web page provided by a dealer from a personal computer of his own company, the customer inputs necessary information such as the number of copies on a print requesting form (job ticket), and the form is sent together with document data to be printed, and the printing of the document can be ordered.
The dealer received this order selects a printer that can complete already allocated jobs fastest from various printers connected to the server through LAN. Then, the dealer adds this new print-job to the last one of the print-waiting jobs.
If the new job had short delivery date and could not wait for completion of other jobs, the new job may exceptionally be processed as an interruption before the other waiting jobs. More efficient job scheduling system is also realized in which a large job is divided into some of small jobs and they are processed by a plurality of printers (concurrent printing), or a job is divided into small jobs such the loads of printers becomes equal to each other (averaging printing), or a job is distributed such that cost is minimized (optimizing printing).
However, in the above conventional art, there is a problem that it is difficult to grasp the total volume of loads of the entire system or distribution state of loads to printers, including how much jobs the entire system has, or the amount of jobs of each printer, or which printer does not have allocated jobs.
FIG. 21 is an explanatory view showing one example of a print-job list window displayed on a conventional print server. Since time required for processing each job is found only roughly from file size or the number of copies, an item of printing time calculated by any calculation equation may be provided in addition to them (or instead of them). However, even with this item, the printing time of each job is only indicated clearly, total printing time required for processing all of jobs distributed to the printers, and the total printing time required for processing all of jobs of the entire system must be obtained by another calculation.
In order to estimate when a job is processed by a printer to which the job is allocated, printing time of previous jobs must be summed up. Therefore, it is complicate to check whether each job can be processed in time point by point. In association with unclearness of processing time period of job, it is difficult to find a total volume of jobs processed for a given time period and a total volume of jobs of each printer.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a printer controlling device which displays a load state of at least one printer connected through a network, a printer controlling method, and a computer program for allowing a computer to execute the method is stored, capable of displaying a load state at various points in time of each printer in a system graphically, in real time and easily.
The printer controlling device according to one aspect of the present invention is which displays a load state of at least one printer connected through a network. This printer controlling device comprises an allocating unit which allocates a print-job to any of the printers, a calculating unit which calculates time required for the printer to which the job was allocated by the allocating unit which processes the print-job, and a display unit which displays the print-job by a predetermined shape having a length which is proportional to the time calculated by the calculating unit, and which arranges the predetermined shapes corresponding to all print-jobs allocated to the printer by the allocating unit an not completed at a constant distance in a horizontal direction or a vertical direction in association with individual printers.
According to the above-mentioned aspect, an accumulation state of a job to each printer is displayed in a form of the job graph comprising all jobs accumulated in the printer.
The printer controlling method according to another aspect of the present invention is a method of displaying a load state of at least one printer connected through a network. This method comprises: an allocating step of allocating a print-job to any of the printers, a calculating step of calculating time required for a printer to which the print-job is allocated by the allocating step of processing the print-job, and a display step of displaying the print-job with a predetermined shape having a length which is proportional to time calculated by the calculating step, the display step arranging and displaying the predetermined shapes respectively corresponding to all print-jobs which are allocated to the printers by the allocating step but are not yet completed, in association with individual printers.
According to the above-mentioned aspect, an accumulation state of a job to each printer is displayed in a form of the job graph comprising all jobs accumulated in the printer.
The computer program according to still another aspect of the present invention for allowing a computer to execute the method according to the present invention. A computer can read the computer program stored in this computer-readable storage medium, and execute the method easily and automatically.
Other objects and features of this invention will become apparent from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings.